


The French Wench

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: AU, Multi, Regency Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:46:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the B7 kinkmeme, for the prompt "Gan hugs everybody. In a Regency AU."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The French Wench

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out way too long for a kinkmeme fill, and is not particularly kinky, unless you argue that Blake is really into Paine.

1.  
“Dash it!” said Colonel (Ret.) Sir Edward Travis (Bart.) “The man’s a cursed Sodomite! I’ll not receive him in my house!” 

“I do not believe that to be the case, sir,” said the butler, Orrick, assisting his employer into the blue broadcloth coat chosen for that afternoon’s levee, then pinning up the empty sleeve. “The simple explanation is that he is a pious man, and given to enthusiastic embraces of his fellow souls.”

“A damned dissenter, then? As bad or worse.”

“Merely an Evangelical. He has the gift of the living at the estate he has recently purchased in Albianshire.”

Sir Edward subsided to a grumble. “Well, I suppose you must be right, you know everything. Best bring up another dozen of Madeira from the cellars, whether I let him in the house or not, damme if they don’t come from miles around to meet him.”

“I am not surprised that a number of people wish to scrape acquaintance. Mr. Gann is very wealthy,” Orrick said. “He has prospered in the China trade, and in the importation of muslins.” 

“But who are his people? No one has heard of them.”

2\.   
Marie-Ange, Comtesse de Servalanne, felt distinctly unwell. What, she asked herself, could a woman expect if she had to drift ethereally through this cursed damp country, wearing nothing but a few yards of muslin and a skimpy shawl?

In her heart of hearts, however, she knew that her indisposition had nothing to do with climate and everything to do with climax. 

She was but recently returned from a Continental watering-place, where her fortunes had been temporarily improved in one way. Now, with all that money spent, she was aware that she was at risk of utter ruin in another way. 

On the fatal evening, the man seated opposite her at the gaming table was not handsome. Yet his features were unusual, and his dark eyes compelling. His voice, combining tones of velvet with those of flint striking steel, stirred her. Perhaps it was he who brought her luck, for it seemed that she could not put a card wrong all night. 

However, luck did not seem to favour him. The pile of coins in front of him had dwindled to almost nothing when he stepped away from the table briefly to refresh himself. La Comtesse noticed that, on his return, the purse from which he replenished his stakes did not resemble the one from which he betted earlier in the night. She also noticed that a fat milord, who snorted in his slumber, sprawled in a chair in a corner of the room with the cotton lining protruding from his breeches pocket. 

Then the deal moved to the dark-eyed man in the purple velvet coat. He won a little, lost a little, then the money on the table seemed drawn to him like a lodestone, without ceasing to arrive, at a more moderate pace, before the comtesse’s seat. 

The deal passed again, to a straight-backed woman with iron-grey hair. The man in purple stood up, pushing against the lace cuff of his shirt, collected his winnings, and bid la Comtesse de Servalanne to sup with him. After a quick calculation of her own winnings, she nodded her agreement. 

They should have been hungry, after long hours of gaming, and (although it had not always been the case) they had ample funds for the most luxurious meal that the hotel’s restaurant could muster. Yet they left most of their repast (other than the oysters) to go cold on the plate.

The comtesse noticed that it took some little time for her new friend to open the door of the best room at the inn. Well, he had taken a number of bumpers during the brief time of their acquaintance. And he did not appear very familiar with the room, once the door was opened. La Servalanne chose not to permit this to disturb her.

Had she been at home, there would have been a sponge soaked in vinegar in the compartment carved into the bedpost. In some ways her companion seemed a practiced libertine, but he had not supplied himself with English overcoats. 

3.  
Mr. Kerr Avon opened the shutters in his humble two-pair-back and considered which of his small remaining store of possessions could be turned to advantage. He poured himself a large measure of cognac, consulted the level of the decanter, and poured half of it back. He shivered, not only because of the paucity of wood in the grate, but because of the dread likelihood that he would have to return to his previous vocation. {{Anything but that}} he promised himself. 

4.  
The Hon. Phillimore Stannis looked up from his newspaper. Much of his day was spent perusing it, noting who had died, who had been made bankrupt, and which tantalizing sets of initials hinted at possible future Parliamentary petitions for divorce. With stamp tax at fourpence per sheet, he was poignantly aware that soon this modest pleasure might have to be surrendered as an unaffordable luxury.

After a brisk tap on the door of his study, his daughter strode in. Stannis was displeased by this intrusion, which no doubt would waste his time with women’s tittle-tattle. “Yes, Father?” she asked.

“I’ve good news for you!” he said. “I’ve sent for the dressmaker. You may have as many new dresses as you like…”

Miss Stannis’ face brightened. “…up to a limit of four,” he amended. “One, no, two of them may be silk and only one callicoe. And, you may tell her to exercise her fancy as she likes, the arrangement of your wedding dress need not reflect the prudential desire to have it made over, for your husband will be able to buy you new ones.”

Miss Stannis crossed her arms and waited, in no very bright humour, for the explanation.

“Mr. Oliver Gann,” Phillimore said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He is of a suitable age to wed…”

“Well past it!” Jenna snapped.

“…and of a very good fortune.”

“But of no name. He is but one generation from the stables. He can barely be called a gentleman. His conduct is not that of a gentleman. No one would receive him, or risk submission to his promiscuous embraces, if he were not monstrously rich.”

“And we are monstrously poor, you silly chit.” The Hon. Phillimore was the fourth of an earl’s five sons. One of his brothers had been killed at the head of his regiment, but that was of no service to Phillimore. There were still two brothers older than himself, both of them well provided with heirs. “Pecunia non olet,” he said smugly, He forgot that quoting Latin tags to stress his own worldly knowledge and his daughter’s ignorance did no good, because she learned more by eavesdropping on her brother’s Latin lessons than William learned himself. 

“But pecunia Ol-iver,” Jenna said. “Why must I marry a dull man, of no consequence, whom I should scarcely recognize if I saw him at a rout, and for whom I have no respect and no liking?” 

“Of course you should recognize him. His appearance is odd enough, and his stature great enough, that he is easily enough observed in any assembly.” 

“That does not seem to me to be an adequate motive for contracting matrimony.”

“You always complain that you are kept here like a caged bird. When you marry him he may well take you on a wedding journey. They say Cornwall is agreeable for the purpose. He must own a tin mine or so.”

“Every tin mine must be owned by someone,” Jenna said. “I cannot marry them all at once, and they are far too many to marry sequentially. Why should I commence that hopeless task by marrying Mr. Gann at all?”

“The order of society is divinely ordained,” the Hon. Phillimore said. “The Creator has assigned to each of us a task. My task is to govern this estate wisely and benevolently. Your brother’s task is to fight for his country. The purchase of his commission consumed what little money remained to us after he drank and wenched and gambled away all that he could. Consequently, your task is to marry someone with plenty of money who is willing to take you without a dowry because of the position you can give him in society.”

“By which I perceive,” Jenna said, “That the difference between going among the _ton_ and going upon the town is simply a matter of emphasis.” 

5\.   
“Oh, hullo,” Avon said. “It’s you again.” He forbore to ask her what she was doing here, for he had no intention of furnishing an accurate answer on his own part so expected no better from her. At times since their encounter he had remembered it fondly, although he had not expected to cross the path of the mysterious Comtesse again.

“You wretch! You reprobate!” la Servalanne said. “I wish I’d never met you!”

“Why?” he said. “I deemed that night quite enjoyable.” Then he whistled softly as he noted the Madonna-like placement of her hand on her abdomen, which was yet but gently rounded. “Well, then, why didn’t you tell me?”

“A pretty problem that would have been, with no address and barely the sound of your name.” 

Avon shrugged. “And you didn’t try to…escape your predicament?”

“Oh, I tried,” la Servalanne said, her deepest voice rippling in reminiscence of dreadful herbal decoctions sipped. “I’ll never trust a wise woman again.”

“It is a mad world that blames the bai…the baby for the incontinence of its parents. Still, that is the world as ‘tis,” Avon said feelingly. He scowled, sunk in thought for a moment. “Simple enough,” he said. “We’ll wed quickly, and if the baby lives to be born, it will have the shelter of our marriage-lines.” There was no need to state that, likely enough, he would show a clean pair of heels once this honourable duty was undertaken.

The Comtesse gazed at him, dumbfounded. She was by no means sure that she wanted to marry Avon, but lacked, for the moment, a more provident plan. “But in what parish can we have the banns called?”

“Special license.”

"I don’t believe we have a pound between the two of us,” the Comtesse said, stung into unaccustomed candour. 

Avon rummaged through the drawer of the small table until he found a sheet of paper that satisfied his standards. “As soon as it’s light enough to write in the morning, I shall indite it myself,” he said. “Give it another day or so for the ink to dry, find a church that takes but little care of these matters, and handy-dandy, the thing is done.”

6.  
On a fine day, such as this one, it was not unknown for the vicar of St. Hilda’s to ride to market and purchase provisions on his own account. As an unmarried clergyman who had no sister, for propriety’s sake the only housekeeper he could employ was a doddering crone. He was not sure if he was more greatly inconvenienced by the defects in her eyesight or her moral character (the selection of purveyors depended on who would give her a vail). At least when he filled the saddlebags himself there was a chance of purchasing butter and candles of good quality.

The vicar dismounted from his stallion. Mr. Gann, followed by his man of business, saluted him. “That’s a fine, fiery stallion you have there, Mr. Blake.”

Carefully moving out of arm’s length of his parishioner, Blake gave the horse’s flank a pat and said, “Thank you, Mr. Gann. Good old Lib is my one luxury. A clergyman must spend so much time a-horse .”

“That roan will be your t’rone, eh?”

“Just so!”

7.  
By custom one may become inured to anything. The topers who took their ale and dog’s nose and flip before the good fire at The Honest Man never even noticed the grim burden of the faded, chipped inn sign. The painted figure’s nose and right hand had been stricken off, and he stood, a rope around his neck, beneath a crude gallows.

“There’s summat odd about that girl,” a sturdy farmer said.

“Aye. She’s an incomer,” said another. And it was true; Cally had left the orphanage only about ten years earlier, finding her way to The Honest Man when she was nearly dead of cold and hunger. 

Cally mopped industriously at the bar with a bit of muslin (imported in one of Mr. Gann’s ships), but it did no more than a single bucket would have done to clean the Augean Stables.

A man slunk into the tavern, his shoulders slouched, his shabby hat pulled down in case anyone could identify his downturned face. Cally reached beneath the bar and gave him a dish containing a thick slice of bread-and-dripping, a piece of cheese, and a slightly wrinkled apple. “I saved this for you, Cuthbert,” she said. 

“Ta, Cally, you’re a lovely girl,” he said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “How about a drop of ale, then? It’s thirsty work.”

She shook her head. “Landlord’d put me back on the road to beg if he saw me giving drinks for free.”

“Thought you’d say that,” he said, reaching into the depths of his breeches pocket and eventually producing a coin. “Sell it me, then.” She sighed, but could think of no reason that her employer would accept to turn away custom. 

“Oi, Villain!” said Jem the wheelwright. “What work’s that? Never heard tell of you doing any.”

“Your shout innit?” said Restal, draining his tankard and passing it to Jem. “Then, I’ve got something to talk to you about.”

8.  
“That’s my dish of tea!” the Comtesse cried. The landlady had made no inquiries about her presence in Mr. Avon’s room, and so was unlikely to be reassured that it had been rendered lawful some days previously.

“I’ve need of it,” Avon said, wetting his handkerchief and carefully dabbing at two bits of parchment whose edges were already toasted to an appetizing tint. 

“What for?”

“Rather before the late Unpleasantness, I spent some time in Paris,” Avon said. “In your country, they don’t accord much respect to English books.” (And that, reflected the Comtesse, was true enough.) “So I was able to purchase quite a large volume for a handful of sous. It contains all the plays of Shakespeare. I can write in that queer crabbed old secretary hand. Now, if I were to write a couple of letters and ascribe them to the poet himself…and make the paper look old enough…and then conceal them in the book, where the buyer thinks he has the advantage of me, I daresay I can go to that parson Blake and sell it to him for a good fifty pounds.” (He forebore to mention that he had tried his hand at writing “Love’s Labour Wonne,” but found it so difficult that he chucked his foul papers into the fire and scaled his ambitions downward to a more modest Shakespearean work, in the form of complaints about the price of straw for the Globe Theatre and the quality of velvet supplied for its costumes.) 

La Servalanne blinked. “Where on earth would a clergyman get that sort of money?”

She had a more practical plan, but it advantaged only herself, so she remained silent. 

9.  
Mr. Blake shook his head. “I should like to purchase it,” he said, “But I fear that, such of my stipend is not devoted to charity or expended on the necessities of life, must be used to purchase works of divinity.”

Avon drew upon his most honeyed tones. “Why don’t you keep the book for a few days? Glance over it, and I think you will find that every Englishman’s library should contain the works of the great national Bard.” 

“I have a few of the better and more morally sound plays, in quarto, of course,” said the clergyman. “Will you take a glass?” he offered hospitably. “I have not seen you in church, so we have had little opportunity for acquaintance.”

“Thank you, but no,” Avon said. “I am not a member of the Established Church.” It had been many years since he willingly attended a church service, but, he reflected, many years of two-hour sermons must have given him a lifetime’s worth of ammunition in the artillery-piece of Salvation.

When Avon returned a few days later, he discovered that he had had a happy escape from the port supplied by Mr. Blake’s greengrocer. He also discovered, recouping the Folio, that Mr. Blake, far from taking the bait of the forged letters, had obviously not even noticed their presence. 

10.  
Had anyone asked Miss Stannis why she carried such a very large prayer-book to Divine Service, she would have raised her eyes toward the Heavens and intoned that it had been her dearest Mamma’s. No one ever asked, because no one would have cared unless she substituted a grimoire or some heathen mumbo-jumbo (and probably not even then). The tooled white leather cover was quite large enough to conceal a volume from the circulating library. 

Miss Stannis walked up the aisle of the church, pausing occasionally to salute a friend and make certain that her second-newest frock was seen to advantage. (Her intransigence on the topic of matrimony had led to the postponement of the dressmaker’s visit.) The pew-opener bowed and opened the door of the best pew, where her father and her maid Tabitha were already ensconced. The spring day was cool, so she was glad of the warmth of the brazier burning on the floor of the pew. 

The vicar was no Papist, of course, so he was viewed as the predestinate prey of all the Misses and Mammas of the upper tradesmen. It was universally acknowledged that the living of St. Hilda’s was worth two hundred pounds a year. In the year of his incumbency, there had been such a flurry of blue ribbons and cambric handkerchiefs and positively two straw bonnets that Mrs. Thelwell, the draper’s wife, felt that Mr. Blake’s residence was a blessing to the family even if her own Louisa’s sweepstakes ticket were not to be drawn. 

Rather like Polonius, who, unless furnished with a jig or a tale of bawdry, slept, the Hon. Phillimore preferred a rousing sermon with a burden of Hellfire to terrify the less exalted members of the congregation into proper conduct. Mr. Blake’s voice was soothing, and his unfortunate insistence on preaching about matters such as Justice and Mercy had a predictable effect on the nobleman.

As his snores crescendoed, diminished, and crested once again, Jenna felt safe in reaching for the ribbon bookmark bound into Volume Three of “Euphrosyne, Or, Vice Duly Rebuked.” There were thirty pages until the end. Feeling virtuous on account of her care for others, she determined to finish reading it in time for Tabitha to bring it back to the circulating library the very next day.  
Suspenseful as those last pages were, Miss Stannis was in no doubt of the outcome (she had read it three times previously). How affecting the parting between Euphrosyne and the man who ruined her and now would be hanged at Tyburn the very next day! And yet, dreadful as this fate was, Jenna could not entirely escape the sentiment that a few short weeks in the embrace of a handsome hangman would be far more interesting than a lifetime of handing the keys to the tea caddy to the kitchenmaid and paying morning calls.

11.  
After the service, Mr. Blake looked forward to relaxing from his sabbatical exertions by entertaining a few guests to dinner.

The vicar did not keep a good table. His housekeeper had burnt the ducks to a crisp (and had been quite indifferent about removing the shot from the flesh) but scarcely troubled the leg of mutton with more hot water than she supplied for the clergyman’s bath. The syllabub was curdled. The Madeira was dreadful. 

To preserve the proprieties, the wizened local apothecary and his stout wife had been invited. The Comtesse sighed. Usually, when asked to sing for her supper, she provided dreadful tales of the fiendish revolutionaries. Early on in the meal, she realized that her host and his friend were Radicals of the deepest dye, seeking information about the infamies of the Ancien Regime. Fortunately they both talked so much that, before she had to retire to the drawing room with the tedious Mrs. Ferris, she was able to get by with a few anecdotes she had read in a newspaper, and to widen her eyes appealingly and hint that her sufferings were too dreadful to describe. 

12.  
“Oh, hullo, Marie-Ange,” Avon said, when wife returned (resuming her wedding ring as she climbed the stairs). “Where’ve you been?”

“Dining with Mr. Blake. Of course he doesn’t know that I know about your fiasco, or that I know you at all, and I shall thank you not to tell him. Until you are able to provide for me as your wife, kindly do not interfere with my efforts to take care of myself.”

“All in good time, my dear. Those of us who live by our wits are under the protection of Dame Fortune. I’m certain that I will devise some shift or other to the benefit of our family.”

“Give me leave to doubt that. What have you to offer the world but the manners of a dancing-master?”

“I shall do you the favour of not quoting the other half of that tag. And I daresay that a dancing-master of adequate skill, or adequate charm, can manage quite a decent living.”

“I wish I’d never met you!”

Avon shrugged. “In some ways, I am quite glad to have met you. You are an interesting woman, although not a comfortable one.”

She began to tug on her wedding ring, to throw it in his face, then thought better of it. It could not be sold for much (it was, like her spouse, brazen), but would be more serviceable as a fount of meals and new shoes (the mud in the lanes was shocking) than as a projectile. 

13.  
It was her least fashionable, and least flattering, cloak, but it did have the virtue of concealing her midriff. She reminded herself to ration the times when she might be viewed in profile. She waited for the clock to strike, reminding herself of how precise her timing must be. She could not arrive too early during the time of the levee, for then she would be compelled to leave her card and vanish after a quarter of an hour. Nor could she arrive too late, for it was essential that there be witnesses both to see her in Mr. Gann’s drawing room and to whisper that she remained there after their own departure, so they could only speculate what prodigies of vice had occurred. 

La Servalanne pulled on her gloves and took up the folio. She thought that a parvenu was a far likelier purchaser of an expensive tome than a clergyman compelled to live on his stipend and perhaps a small annuity, and Avon ought to have perceived that. But, like a falcon, she flew at higher game. 

She spared a moment of pity for Miss Stannis, whom, she anticipated, would be deprived of the rich marriage that was arranged for her. Then the comtesse hardened her heart again, for no one had snared a rich husband for *her* to feed on. 

It gladdened the comtesse’s heart to see that, while most of the guests had departed from Mr. Gann’s drawing room, the ones who remained were quite the greatest gossips and tattle-mongers in the parish. They remarked the fervor with which he embraced her, quite failing to observe that they had been offered a salute quite as hearty. 

Once she was alone with Mr. Gann, the comtesse showed him the volume and recommended its purchase to him. 

“Ah, yes,” he said, explaining it for the benefit of the foreigner. “Shakespeare is a part of our birthright. One seems to absorb the Bard’s great works, as part of the air we breathe.” He paged through the book, squinting at the dedicatory verse. “Well, this chap is no Shakespeare. I don’t suppose anything more was ever heard of **him**. How much are you asking for this book, madame?”

La Servalanne took a deep breath. “Five pounds.”

Mr. Gann whistled. “My dear lady! I have succeeded in trade, which is no game for fools. I must be careful of what I spend, particularly on luxuries.” She looked crestfallen, and he relented somewhat. “However, as this would be a worthwhile addition to my library, and I do not know how much you paid for this volume” (he thought it unlikely that it would be an heirloom passed down among the French nobility) “would a pound be of any service to you?”

“It would represent an excellent return on my speculation, thank you,” she said. She placed the money in her reticule. He kissed her hand (observed by the housemaid, who carried a large feather-duster to commence cleaning the drawing room after the levee), and she departed. Now that (in her own mind, at least) the evidence for Mr. Gann as the author of her ruin had been established, she could return at her leisure and demand either to be wed or to be pensioned off. 

The volume remained on the piecrust table. A few days later, the housemaid saw the letters protruding from the upper edge of the folio. She tore them into spills, and used one to start the drawing-room fire, the other for curl papers.

14.  
The lady and her maid had been helped into the stagecoach, and it rumbled off along its way. “Good day, Miss Stannis,” Gann said. She recognized his features in the dimness of the coach, and, after a brief spasm of annoyance, composed herself. “Where are you going? I was not made aware that you were about to undertake a journey.”

Shuddering at the thought that, unless some miracle were to intervene, she would be forced to get his permission for a far shorter peregrination, Jenna said, “My sister-in-law is lying in of her fifth. My help is needed in the household and with the older children.”

“Ah, I see.” Jenna stared at him until he dropped his eyes, abashed. As they had nothing whatsoever to say to one another, Mr. Gann fell asleep and Jenna kicked the heel of her boot against the lower part of the seat until her maid rummaged through the hand luggage and produced a tiny metal hook and hank of thread. Jenna had tatted so much lace of a fashionable pattern that she was quite able to do so in the dimness of the coach. 

There was a fourth passenger, who sat next to the window, reading by the light of a small lantern. 

That fellow seems deuced familiar, thought Gann, opening his eyes and yawning. I know I’ve seen him somewhere… He wished that he had thought to bring that Shakespeare book along with him, but it was large enough to be an encumbrance in his portmanteau.

The coach groaned along its way, with the usual creak of harness and hammer of hooves on the muddy, rutted road. Then the coachman shouted, but the team escaped his control and galloped until the forehorse stumbled on a boulder in the road and fell. The carriage overset. The bruised coachman stood up, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead, then ran after a horse that had kicked over the traces. The horse that had stumbled struggled to its feet. The coachman mopped at his face with a checked kerchief, relieved to see that the forehorse favored one leg, but the leg seemed lame, and not broken. 

The passengers stumbled out, blinking in the sunshine. Gann saw that the lady and her maid were safe, then ran to embrace the coachman and inquire after his hurts. Avon, after brushing off his cloak and breeches, occupied himself with stacking up the luggage, then crawled beneath the coach. One of the wheels seemed to be warped, and the front axle had not fared well in its encounter with the boulders. 

“Oh, do stop sniveling, Tabitha,” Jenna said. “You are unharmed, and at the worst, we shall wait here some little time until the coachman rides to the next stage and sends another coach back to retrieve us.” 

“Yes, Miss,” Tabitha said dubiously. Her apprehension was quickly vindicated as, first, it began to rain, and then a man shuffled out of the shrubbery, holding an aged, rusty flintlock. “Stand and deliver?” he suggested. His shoulders were slumped and his entire mien betrayed a lifetime of disappointments. His clothes were ragged. His face, which appeared amiable enough, was shaded by a battered straw hat that well might have been robbed from a scarecrow (a victim that, at least, would offer no resistance).

“Now, see here, my good man,” Gann said. “What sort of conduct is this? If you are apprehended, you will find yourself dancing on air.”

“Naaah,” the miscreant said. “I can read, see?” (This was not strictly true, but he did have Cally test him periodically on the relevant verse, as a precautionary matter.)

“Transported, then.”

“Gawd!” the outlaw said. “That wouldn’t do at all! Martyr to seasickness, that’s me.”

Gann moved closer, his arms extended for a hug. “It’s a sign!” he said. “Why don’t you give up this evil way of life, and come to work for me? I’ve need of a rent collector, just now.” He forebore to mention what had befallen the last two, and, at any rate, with luck tarring and feathering was quite survivable. 

Avon, seeing his chance, rushed at the robber (who had nearly vanished into the cavern formed by the larger man’s open greatcoat), and seized the gun. “Bloody hell!” he said, opening it and examining the breech.

Gann stopped patting the criminal’s back and said, “For shame, sir! There is a lady present!”

Avon sketched a theatrical obeisance with the hand not holding the gun and bowed his head in Jenna’s general direction, then addressed himself once more to the would-be thief. “Assuming that this…fowling-piece….were operable at all, it isn’t even loaded.” 

“’Course not! That’s how people get hurt! Not to mention the price of balls, shocking, that is.” He turned toward his new employer apologetically. “The bullets kind, not, well, you know.”

There was a thunder of hoofs, headed West (the coachman, taking the least-winded of the uninjured horses to the next stage). Avon shrugged, remembered that he had brought some tools in his own luggage, and resolved to see if he could repair the coach on his own account, for he cared but little either for the weather or the company.

A few minutes later, he had not gone far toward solving the problem. The frustrated malefactor wandered over, peered at Avon’s attempts, and said, “Why don’t you take the pistol and use it to sort of prop up that broken bit? That way you’d only need the two hands, not three.”

“If I require your advice, I shall ask for it,” Avon said in his frostiest tone, suggesting the temperature that would prevail on that occasion. He returned his attention to the broken axle, deeming it a more serious problem than the dented wheel, which perhaps could be straightened out by hitching the sounder of the remaining horses to it and pulling. 

The sound of hooves rang out, and the stranded travelers looked up with hopeful mien, anticipating that the coachman had returned with assistance. Then their faces fell as, first, they realized that the sound was that of one lone rider only, and second, that he was a figure to strike terror into any group of travelers less jaded than the present company. 

“Another highwayman?” Avon said. “If this were played upon the stage, I would account it an implausible coincidence. This **is** the highroad, but I would not have expected it to be quite so crowded.”

“No!” roared the man on the huge roan, his visage shaded by a huge plumed hat and further obscured by a black scarf around the lower part of his face. “I do not come to rob you, but to help and enlighten you!” He had delayed his trip to the workingmen’s coffeehouse, waiting for the rain to stop, and was gratified to find a group to benefit.

“Couldn’t you confer this benefit—whatever it might be—with rather less drama?” Avon suggested fastidiously. 

The man on the stallion cleared his throat, obviously annoyed. He reached into his saddlebag and clutched a large handful of pamphlets. “This is a transformative version of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” prepared by myself,” he said. “I have omitted the portions dealing with the affairs of the quondam American colonies.” 

“Oi, mate,” Restal said. “You’ve got the costume right, and lovely bit of horseflesh you have there, but did you miss the day in highwayman school when they explained that you’re supposed to steal things?”

Jenna struggled to keep an unladylike grin from disfiguring the composure of her features, as the stunning realization burst upon her heart. {{I’d know that horse anywhere}}, she thought. 

15.  
Some weeks later, Jenna poured out her father’s dish of tea, passed it over to him, and set it down with such a clatter that “I paid a morning call on the Misses Travis,” Jenna said. “They told me that the fine betrothed you have selected for me is the culprit in the French lady’s ruin. And it must be so, for Orrick whispered it to me when he handed me my bonnet and cloak. Am I then to be sacrified to a libertine who cares not how many innocent, unprotected women he dishonours?” 

“Hem,” the Hon. Phillimore said. “Has she any brothers to call him out if he does not wed her?”

“None known,” Jenna said. “Perhaps they have lost their heads.”

“A fine thing when a brother can be indifferent to his sister’s ruin!” Jenna tilted her head and looked at him inquiringly. “Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose they’d be a lot of Frenchies, so perhaps they have.” He spread his legs further and leaned forward in his wing-chair, deep in thought. “You haven’t grown to like Mr. Gann, have you? Not jealous that he’s gone and ruined somebody else?”

“Not one bit. And I hope you trust, if not my duty as Christian then at least my good sense that I would not permit myself to be ruined by a great booby such as Gann.”

“Ah, well, then, it’s all one, to the roof over the stable block, whether it’s paid for by marriage or a suit for breach of promise.” Jenna waited, with bated breath, hoping that the matter was resolved. 

16.  
“Ah, good to see you at last,” Mr. Gann said, as his housekeeper brought in a decanter, filled with a nectar that had *not* been supplied by Mr. Blake’s grocer. “Please, be seated. Mrs. Fullwether, poke up the fire, we’re clemmed here.”

“Of course I shan’t sit down!” said Sir Edward. “Why, I’ve half a mind to call you out!”

{{And half a face to do it with}} thought Gann, then chid himself for this unkindness. “But why, my friend? We are scarce acquainted, and as I cast my mind back, I can imagine no wrong that I have done you.” 

“Can’t imagine, eh? Men like you are a plague, sneaking about and always scheming how to do a man an injury behind his back.” 

Mr. Gann supplied his usual remedy when he perceived anyone in distress, although in two senses, the situation differed from the usual. An objective observer might have concluded that not everyone was best pleased by his embraces, but they seldom uttered a groan that seemed to be fetched up from Tartarus itself. Furthermore, Mr. Gann was astonished that the man in his arms had a most ferocious cock-stand. 

“There, there!” said Gann, concluding that such a steep and thorny path showed his visitor’s expectation of a primrose path of dalliance. The baronet buried his face in Gann’s shoulder, though he had but one eye with which to sob. Gann reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, wrapping it around his hand. He did not think the technical problem would be insuperable. He undid a few of the buttons of Travis’ breeches, and interposed his hand. 

Mere moments later, Sir Edward, giving a cry even more hideous than the previous, fled, clumsily reaching for the gaping buttons with his sole hand.

17.  
“Fine sermon, fine sermon,” the Hon. Phillimore yawned. Nearly all of the parishioners in the humbler, more rearward pews had already departed. 

“Thank you,” Mr. Blake said. He hoped desperately that he would be able to exchange a whispered word or two with Jenna and find out how immediate was his danger. He had prayed, but scarce hoped, that he could once again scrape by and avoid detection. 

The Hon. Phillimore walked down the aisle, with what seemed to Blake to be slowness as agonizing as if he were fettered and dragged his leg-irons. As soon as he was out of earshot, Jenna said, “Tabitha! Kindly go and fetch my prayer-book! I must have left it in our pew!”

“But, miss,” Tabitha said, gesturing toward the prayer-book that was clasped to her mistress’ ribs. Jenna wore a dark green silk dress, and the white leather of the prayer-book (which, in truth, was no smaller than the folio of the Bard’s that has played such a role in this tale) was particularly conspicuous. 

“My prayer-book, Tabitha,” Jenna said, fixing a basilisk glance upon her abigail. 

“Yes, miss,” Tabitha said. She went to the pew, closed the door, and sat down, wondering how long she should wait before emerging, and wondering whether Miss would pretend to have found the prayer-book herself or whether Tabitha would be required to feign to produce an imaginary prayer-book whose discovery could then be exclaimed upon. One could not expect natural behavior among the great folk, and it was often difficult to discern their expectations amidst rules that were disclosed only when broken.

“The Testament instructs we mere women to keep silent in churches,” Jenna said meaningfully. “As, in the law courts, women may not testify.”

“That’s not quite right,” Blake said, eager as ever to edify. “They may not testify against their husbands, for in law, the wife’s legal existence is subsumed in that of her husband, just as her property becomes his.”

“Fancy!” Jenna said, who was, for this reason, glad that she had no property. 

“I have been apprised of the frightening experience you suffered upon the High Road,” Blake said condolingly. I’ve been meaning to ask you if you have recovered from that shock.”

“Quite well, thank you,” Jenna said. 

“Perhaps, then, you might inform me of the facts of the matter? Gossip is so unreliable.”

“’Enter, Rumour, painted full of tongues,’” Jenna said. “I quite agree. Let me see. The stagecoach encountered an obstruction in the road, unfortunately just as a thunderstorm began. We were all dreadfully shaken about, but no one injured. And then a wretched little man tried to rob us, but no one paid him the slightest heed. Mr. Avon tried to patch up the coach, but to no avail. Eventually a farmer drove by in his cart. He had just unloaded his hay, so we were able to load our luggage, and seat ourselves in the cart, although in no great comfort. Fortunately the rain had stopped. It was quite an adventure.” 

“Nothing else?” Blake asked.

“Nothing else,” Jenna said fervently, clasping two pounds of invisible prayer-book to her bodice.

“What a mercy, then!” Blake said.

“Quite a providential deliverance,” Jenna said. 

18.  
Orrick closed the bedroom door soundlessly and put down the tea tray. “Shall I open the curtains, sir?”

Sir Edward yawned, sat up in bed, and grunted his assent. Grey light poured in, and rain drummed on the panes. 

“This wrack I have suffered,” the baronet said. “Is my appearance frightening? Have I become hideous? I often feel that I am outcast from humanity.”

“The noble marble statuary of the Greeks is often lovelier for the absence of limbs lost to time,” Orrick said. “And how can a patriot fail to be grateful to a soldier who has taken heavy wounds in defense of our country, least of all when those wounds echo those of the noble Admiral?”

“ **Close** the curtains, Orrick,” Sir Edward said.

19.  
Jenna cast her mind through the list of schoolfriends, trying to find one whose father would pay to receive the letter in which she announced her future engagement. Then she desisted, even before taking pen in hand, overcome by the difficulties. How could she proclaim a match so bereft of distinction and fortune?

After what la Comtesse would have called a mauvais quart d’heure, Jenna’s spirit brightened. One could hardly marry into a family more ancient and esteemed than Our Lord’s. 

20.  
Fortune had smiled on the Avon ménage. He had cast a horoscope for Miss Windlesham, providing him with funds for a day at the racetrack. He had prospered to an extent on his bets, and subsequently far more by selling his infallible system to several credulous bettors.

The comtesse’s quest for redress for the injury to her reputation was unsuccessful. She forgot that Mr. Gann had no place in society to lose, and if his neighbours made his residence in town uncomfortable, he need only remove to Albianshire. The merchant told her to publish and be…dashed. But then, strategy was never la Servalanne’s strength. She was far too inclined to consider the needs and impulses of the moment.

With cash in hand, Avon felt able to surrender to a chivalrous impulse to rescue the woman who, fairly soon, would be the mother of his child. Amidst enough lace and white satin for the bride, and best-cut worsted and deerskin for the groom, to send several dressmakers and tailors into the Gazette, the soon-to-be wed pair appeared somewhat agitated. As the service drew toward its close, Mr. Blake reflected that he had never seen such concern about the prospect of immediate speech or eternal silence. He could not make up his mind whether they dreaded or hoped for an interruption. The bride, in particular, seemed cognizant of where all the exits were located. 

And, indeed, for the first time in Mr. Blake’s experience, an interruption arrived. The heavy doors of the church groaned open. A slender young woman, whose curls would have done justice to the officiant himself, out of breath with the effort, rushed toward the altar just as Blake’s sonorous voice rang out with, “It is not LAWFUL!” 

“Stop!” she shouted. “This is no fit marriage. This man is a vile seducer, and he is wed already! I know this to be the truth, for I was a witness at St. Giles’ Church, and made my mark on the register there, where you may see it.” 

“Hoosh yer gob, ye daft jessie!” Avon roared, driven in his ire back to his native woodnotes wild. Realizing only at the last moment that tearing the fine lace would make it impossible to pawn, he flung back the veils covering La Comtesse’s face. “She’s my ain guidwife, and I’ll wed her a hundred times if I like.” (Repetitive spousals could be undertaken at little charge to the family coffers, for the wedding clothes were not paid for and, after the honeymoon, the bride-elect remembered to hand back the wedding ring for re-use this morning.)

The minister shut the Book of Common Prayer with a snap. “How dare you profane the Lord’s sacraments? And how dare you serve me out so? I have always trusted you, Avon. From the very beginning.”   
Gann rose and walked from his pew to the aisle. “I knew I’d met you before! It’s Archie Kerr, isn’t it? I was present when you read a paper at the Royal Institution.”

“Oh, the de’il take the Royal Institution…” Avon said. 

“Archie?” asked the bride, sounding less than pleased. 

The levity of that nickname did not please its owner, and the suggestion of baldness was deeply distressing to a man whose masculine relatives, to the extent known, had, from the age of forty onwards, been in peril when bending over billiard-tables. 

“Where’d the Avon come from, then?” the bride asked.

“Oh, well, you know, the English and their Shakespeare,” the groom said. Addressing himself to Gann, he continued, “It was at the Royal Institution that Del Grant, curse his name, heard me read. I was courting his sister then…”

The bride sulked and tapped her foot. Avon turned to her and said, “Consider, my dear, that I have wed you twice and her never, so you are the victrix.” To Gann, he said, “And Grant took advantage of that acquaintance to steal my papers and notebooks and all and furnish himself with lucrative patents from my work. At that time, I knew that there was no future in honest work, so I resolved to abandon it and live no more honestly than those who inhabit the castles and the bench of Justice. In short, to take advantage of the credulous and foolish, for wisdom is of account.”

“And you assert this foul philosophy with pride? Get out of my church!” Blake roared. “My temple should be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!”

“Tisn’t your church, but God’s,” protested the intruder. 

“Step outside, then,” Mr. Gann said. He turned to the lady who had been sitting next to him in the pew. “Kindly wait here for me for a few minutes, my dear. Then I shall accompany you to your home.” The banns had already been read twice. Miss Travis was twenty-seven years of age, and Mr. Gann decided that matrimony would more comfortable were he to marry a woman of only middling position who brought a moderate portion with her, and actually pleased by the prospect of marrying him.

“I can always use a clever man who can devise engines,” Gann said. He seated himself on the stone bench facing the winding path amidst the gravestones. “As it is, the workings must be abandoned before they are quite mined out, and I lack the facilities to process ores, placing me quite at the mercy of those who can. Come and work for me. Let us say, four hundred pounds a year?” 

“Guineas,” said the Comtesse automatically, hiding her fury. She shivered, as the wind blew her veils and satin about. Eight pounds a week! When she had been a mill-girl with clogs on her feet and a shawl on her head, months of toil had yielded her a lesser sum than that. 

“You fancy high play, do you not, my love?” Avon asked, rising from the gravestone where he had been sitting (and brushing the dust and dried leaves off his trousers). He put his arm around his bride, then turned to face his potential employer. “Shall we say that, apart from a trifling fifty pounds or so to set up house, you needn’t pay me a salary—but we shall be equal partners, in whatever innovations I can devise?”

“I hope that you are not being a damned fool,” la Servalanne said. At least with fifty pounds, there would be a roof over the baby’s head. And, as she consoled herself, it was not beyond the realm of possibility for her to vanish and leave Avon holding the baby.

“Not half so much as I do,” Avon said. He cleared his throat. “I suppose it don’t signify, as now you are Mistress Kerr twice over, but, as I am to revert to being a natural philosopher” (Avon bowed slightly in Gann’s direction) “I am curious. You have heard my true name. What is yours?”

“Peggy-Ann Saville,” said the ci-devant Comtesse between clenched teeth.

21.  
Reverend Mr. Blake looked up from the letter he was writing in his vigorous, sprawling character, with blotches here and there where his pen stuck when his thoughts flew faster than his hand could keep up. “Ah, good, Miss Stannis,” he said. “I’ve a most particular matter to discuss with you.”

Jenna gasped, then composed herself. 

“I’m just writing to the Bishop, asking for his assistance. For, no matter how many marriages a clergyman has performed, there is one service he can’t very well read himself. I’ve decided that it’s time to brush the dust of this wretched country from my feet. There is a wide field, where salvation is to be won. Now, shall it be India or China? Or, I suppose, both in turn if the one you pick first don’t suit.” 

“China,” Jenna said after a moment’s deliberation. “What they do with porcelain is so lovely, I should like to see what they make of Christianity.”

**Author's Note:**

> The large book in question is the Second Folio. The poem that failed to impress Mr. Gann is by John Milton, who did not quit his day job.


End file.
